With Haryana Assembly elections barely a few weeks away, Congress is all set to replace State party chief Ashok Tanwar to end bitter factionalism which has marked the party in recent months.
After taking over as the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi’s key challenge in poll bound Haryana will be to deal with factionalism in the state, triggered by non-cooperation of a majority of MLAS, led by former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda with Tanwar
It was expected that Tanwar will resign after electoral defeat of Congress Party in the Parliamentary election 2019 but he did not resign from the post.Differences have been witnessed in the Congress’s Haryana unit with party veteran Hooda revolting against the party leadership. The state unit has split into two factions, one comprising Hooda’s supporters, who are demanding a change in the state leadership, and the other supporting state Congress chief Ashok Tanwar. In fact, a change of guard in the state organisation seems inevitable.
Sources in Congress said after Sonia Gandhi took over the leadership on August 10, she was upfront regarding issues related to the states going to the elections this year and early next year. She wants the house in order ahead of the elections, the source added.Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand are due later this year while Delhi will go the polls early next year.
Gandhi apparently had had several rounds of meetings with senior leaders since August 15 to decide on a new unit chief in Haryana. She had also met Hooda in Delhi and is believed to have persuaded him not to part ways with the party. And a decision on the new state unit chief is likely to be announced in two to three days, the source said.
Due to unending differences between Tanwar and Hooda, the party may replace the former with a new leader and give functional autonomy to Hooda in the Campaign Committee and in the selection of candidates for the Assembly polls.
On August 18, Hooda, while addressing a rally in Rohtak, came out in support of the Modi government''s move to axe Article 370 of the Constitution.Hooda also announced a 25-member panel to decide the party''s future in the state, in a signal to the Congress leadership to hand over the party''s reins in the state to him, failing which he would go his own way.
Speculations were rife that Hooda, a two-time Chief Minister, and his son Deepender Singh Hooda, a former MP, might quit the Congress after they said they were sidelined by the party high command.
On August 17, a day before the Rohtak rally, Hooda had a closed-door meeting with Congress leaders in New Delhi during which they tried to convince him not to take any hasty decision to quit the party as it had always accorded him the due importance.